2 THE THEATRE OF MAX REINHARDT fact that very few persons outside Germany are fully acquainted with

the wide results which he has attained. How many dramatic critics are there in England who have surveyed the entire ground which Max Reinhardt has covered, have followed his daily experiments, have seen the definite plan at which he is quietly working in his own sphere of study ? As far as I know, not more than two or three. It is therefore not surprising that a misconception concerning the nature of his activities should have arisen. Hence some English critics do not view his work with any great favour. It has, they think, an effect in encouraging in this country a taste for mere spectacle, and discouraging a taste for the drama. Such critics emphasise, and very rightly, the importance of promoting the drama first, before all things, seemingly unaware that Reinhardt has been doing this from the very start, and that, strangely enough, a great deal of his popularity is owing to that circumstance. They are not aware that he has been searching for first principles, and that in reintroducing impulse to the theatre, in reawakening the quest for intimacy, in striving to attain rhythmical unity, and in seeking to lift the many and varied activities of the theatre out of the local into the universal once more, he is inviting the theatre to become that which it is fitted to become, viz., a refined and highly efficient instrument for receiving and transmitting the spirit of the drama. In short, he has served the drama not only by producing plays by all the most remarkable

writers of the neo-Sturm und Drang period PREFACE 3 through which Europe has just passed, but by endeavouring to construct a theatre wherein he could recapture the first fine rapture of the eternal form of drama, and to restore that element which alone can seize the spectator, and bring him nearer to the profound secret of human existence. He has, in fact, sought to widen and deepen the power of the drama by preparing to give full play to its primitive, religious, and eternal elements, believing, no doubt, that the dramatic spirit resides in the subconscious element in mankind, and finds expression only through that element. Probably students may derive the greatest advantage from the stagecraftsmanship of Max Reinhardt not by examining the strong evidences of German culture and scholasticism underlying it, but by the study of the personal element which it contains. Max Reinhardt himself has brought impression and impulse to our doors once more. His contribution to the current reform of the theatre and the drama in England cannot be overestimated when we remember that without impression to awaken impulse there can be no advance in the drama. Eliminate these two elements and the drama becomes as dull and wearisome as the literary and moral theatre has made it. It should be mentioned that owing to the unavoidable postponement of the publication of this book certain facts call for revision, and they are accordingly dealt with in the " Supplementary Chapter."

HUNTLY CARTER.